


another pagan at the vatican (nice guys finish dead)

by nantes (titians)



Category: Actor RPF, Radio 1 RPF
Genre: (Hints of) Incest, Alternate Universe - Mafia/Godfather AU, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:27:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titians/pseuds/nantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Gemma follows and Nick leads until the day she punches him in the face − for some reason both of them forget as soon as Nick starts screaming and Gemma runs to get their mom − and knocks him to the ground. She punches him so hard, she fractures his cheek with her fist.  His blood stains her fingers.</em>
</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>The agony and ecstasy of growing up a Corleone (and the undying loyalty formed by growing up with them).</p>
            </blockquote>





	another pagan at the vatican (nice guys finish dead)

**Author's Note:**

> this is just what everyone needs; a _Godfather_ AU with gemma  & nick as the corleone siblings and greg as their tom hagen. in my defence, this wasn't my idea. i was asked by some anonymous prompter on tumblr for [a graphic about this](http://titians.tumblr.com/post/53939265091) but little did they know (or maybe they knew and this is exactly what they wanted) that with it, they hit every "YES" synapse and flaily neuron in my brain because because because nick & gemma as bratty, almost regal, ridiculous siblings and greg james as their chew toy in the midst of new york crime politics and growing up italian is everything i didn't know i wanted until someone pointed it out to me.
> 
> in other words, i am sorry that i'm not sorry about this.

> “You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no.' You have to take time and trouble.” **P U Z O**

 

 

It goes Nick leading and Gemma following for the first four years of her life.

Nick is taller, knows which way the key turns in the lock and can reach the handle as well, so it makes sense he leads. And Gemma tags along a second behind him, stepping on his shadow the whole way. She comes home with the same grass stains on her clothes and bruises on her knees, but everyone knows she got them _just_ after her brother.

Gemma follows and Nick leads until the day she punches him in the face − for some reason both of them forget as soon as Nick starts screaming and Gemma runs to get their mom − and knocks him to the ground.

She punches him so hard, she fractures his cheek with her fist. His blood stains her fingers.

Sitting in the hospital, waiting for their son to come out of X-ray, Benito looks at his wife to find her watching Gemma. He looks at his wife and realises she's thinking the same thing as he is.

No one is ever going to tell Gemma what to do. Not even her big brother. And as long as she's happy, everything will be fine.

It should probably worry him more than it does.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

He was two, almost three, when Gemma was born. When Sabine came home from the hospital with Nick's newborn little sister in her arms, Nick took one look at her pink, marshmallow squishy face and turned to his dad and asked, "Can we keep her?"

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Benito doesn't spoil his kids. He teaches them the value of a dollar and always tells them to share, and his kids grow up a healthy mix of well mannered and rich. The family has money − didn't always have it and definitely didn't come from money, but they have it now − but Benito makes sure not to spoil his kids.

He doesn't spoil his kids but Nick spoils Gemma. Anything Gemma wants and it is within Nick's power to give to her, she gets.

Except-

They're six and eight when Nick brings Greg home with him.

He sends Greg off − scrawny, gangly Greg who Benito guesses hasn't eaten in a couple of days and supposes he can stay for dinner and the night − to wash up before they eat and he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet while his dad tidies away his work before Sabine calls them both to eat.

Benito asks, "Can I help you?"

Nick rocks forward with his hips, hands clasped behind his back, and he asks, "Can we keep him?"

Benito is about to say 'he can stay the night' or 'we'll see' when Gemma comes charging around the corner and in through the doorway, all brutish grace and the tangled hair that comes with being six years old, and announces, "Who is that boy?" in that unsubtle tone children seem to save for public situations.

Her left shoelace is untied. Benito stares at it while Nick tells his sister, "That's Greg. He's my new friend. He's staying for dinner."

Gemma frowns.

She frowns and it says 'how come Nick gets to bring friends home', 'why does Nick get one and I don't' and 'so what do I get instead'. But, to her credit, she stays quiet about it; it is genuinely impressive she doesn't start a fuss about it.

Benito spends the next two weeks waiting for a fight to break out. Of _course_ he ends up letting Greg stay; there's no way he can leave a kid out on the streets, send him back out into the cold of winter in New York City. But despite this act of charity, the good intentions of his deed, he waits for a backlash from Gemma.

He waits and waits and waits.

But it never comes.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

That first night, Greg sleeps in Nick's bed. There's no other bed free in the house, so Sabine fetches some extra pillows and sends them to bed at 9 o'clock with a glass of water and kiss on the forehead for both of them.

Greg lets Nick get settled first and then curls himself into whatever space Nick leaves for him.

"C'mon," Nick urges, along with a rustle of sheets. When Greg looks over, Nick is patting the mattress beside him, a smile on his face that Greg mirrors with his own mouth. He shifts over but obviously doesn't move quick enough for Nick, who wraps his long fingers around Greg's wrist and pulls him over.

He topples with it.

They end up pressed chest to chest and Greg's immediate reaction is to apologise, but what comes out of his mouth is, "Thank you." He says 'thank you' in the space between their faces until Nick punches him in the shoulder and tells him to forget about it.

"We're friends, right."

That says it all.

The Corleones buy him a bed the next day; Greg helps Nick and Benito construct, the pieces scattered across Nick's bedroom floor.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma lies back on Nick's bed, crosses her ankles over one another and folds her arms under her head.

She's almost eight and Greg is terrified of her. "What?" she asks, quick and biting when she catches him looking at her. Greg pulls back in fright. Even though it's his room. But Gemma has a habit of entering a room and taking up all the space in it. Sometimes Greg wonders if she comes into the room while the boys are out and touches everything because-

Everything Nick has, Gemma has too. Except for Greg. 

The thought makes him swallow down something in his throat. Greg shakes his head and stays quiet.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

According to Sabine, turning 11 is awkward for all Corleones. But Greg isn't a Corleone. He's a- something else. He's not quite sure who his dad was and he only ever knew his mom as 'momma' before she died. He might live in their house and go to the same Catholic school as Nick (but not Gemma, since Gemma goes to the girls' school a block over) and one of the three bicycles under the tree last Christmas was for him, but he isn't a Corleone.

Benito tells him they can do anything he wants for his birthday.

Greg keeps waiting for someone to pull him to one side and tell him it's all going to end soon. Two years after the day Nick brought him home − like some stray cat he found in a tree − and Greg still feels like he's stealing their time.

He quietly answers, "Can we go to the cinema?"

Benito smiles. His eyes crinkle the same way they do when he smiles at Gemma and Nick.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

On the other hand, Gemma takes to 11 like a swan to water.

It's a dumb analogy, but makes sense to Nick. Cos everyone knows a swan can break a grown man's arm and Gemma _did_ nearly break his face when she was four. Seven years later and he can still feel the tiny indent in his cheekbone where her fist took a chunk out of him.

Gemma turns 11 and she's still Gemma. But she's also not. She turns 11 and their mom says, "You can't keep sleeping over in the boys' room." Nick supposes she's right. But he doesn't understand why she's saying it now − Gemma is 11 but the boys are both 14.

But he doesn't argue and neither does Gemma.

Greg understands.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma is reading some paperback at the table when Greg enters, combing the fingers of one hand through his hair and rubbing his eye with the other. He has seen her reading them before, fat romance novels with heroines tumbling out of bodices on the front cover. Nick teases her for it, but Greg doesn't.

He gives her a smile when she finally looks over the top of the book at him, and she goes, "Will you get the milk."

There is no 'please' and if she were Nick, Greg would make him say it. But Gemma isn't her brother.

A fact Greg has come to notice more and more these days.

They eat breakfast together in comfortable silence. Gemma reads and eats cereal and Greg makes a cup of coffee and crunches his way through the greenest apple from the fruit bowl. He is just about finished his coffee when she takes the cup and puts it in the dishwasher next to her bowl.

Greg says, "Thanks."

Gemma brushes it off with a shrug. She leans back against the counter, her book still open on the table and Greg sitting at it and Greg just. Looks at her. Standing in front of him in her school uniform. He moves his tongue in his mouth but keeps his lips closed and he doesn't know what makes him do it but he does it, licks at the inside of his own mouth while breathing out and looking at Gemma.

She stares off somewhere into the corner of the room.

Greg focuses on her knees. They're framed from underneath by her socks, white white white cotton that contrast starkly with the purple-red bruise on her left knee. Greg doesn't let his eyes go higher than the bruise. He doesn't lift his gaze up to the hem of her skirt, the grey wool sitting against the pale skin of her thigh. He doesn't look there at all.

Nick enters with a 'who died in here?' and Greg and Gemma both turn to look at him.

"Shut up, Nicky," Gemma orders. Only she is allowed call him 'Nicky'.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

(Greg's first kiss is Gemma. He doesn't tell Nick. And when Nick doesn't come up and ask him about it, not a day or a week or a month later, Greg figures Gemma hasn't told him either. He figures he wasn't her first kiss.)

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Nick gets suspended from school for punching a guy in the face. His name's Chris and as far as Benito can work out − pieced together from the little bits filtered out by Greg under duress − he said something about Gemma. But no one will tell him what. He lets Greg go after that, gives him a small smile and a nod and lets him dash off to find Nick and his sister.

He finds them in the bathroom.

Gemma presses Nick up against the sink, swats his hands away when he tries to fight her, and removes the tissue from his nose. It's stained black with blood, glistening in the light coming in from the window.

She asks, "What did he say?"

Nick's voice is thick and he avoids looking at her. Neither of them have realised yet that Greg is there. (It used to bother him when they left him out. When they did 'Corleones only' things together and left him sitting on the stoop at the back door, waiting for them to come home. But over the eight years he's lived in their house, he's gotten pretty used to it.) "He called you a bitch," he sounds out.

Gemma hums.

"Fuck him, Nicky."

Nick looks at her. Blood leaks out of his nose and Nick looks at his sister as she leans in. She dabs his lip with a wet flannel. They share a breath between them. "What does he know about me anyway?"

He smiles.

When Sabine calls them for dinner, Gemma has cleaned up the blood on Nick's face and bandaged up his knuckles. Greg slips into step behind them as they walk down the hallway and when Nick turns to ask, "Where have you been hiding?" Greg shrugs.

"Reading," he lies.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

For Greg's 18th birthday, Benito asks him, "Where would you like to go to college?" The offer to pay for it is implied. Greg can't speak for a solid hour.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

For Greg's 18th birthday, Nick steals a bottle of gin from the cabinet in the living room and they share it back and forth, sitting thigh to thigh beside one another on Nick's bed. Greg plucks at the comforter on top of the bed while Nick tilts his head back and takes a mouthful. His throat bobs around his swallow.

It isn't as weird as it could be when Nick kisses him.

Nick kisses Greg and sighs into his mouth and it feels like they've been building up to this for years. They haven't.

Greg bites down on his lip because he saw someone do it in a movie once. He bites down on the fleshy swell of Nick's bottom lip but doesn't draw blood. Instead, it draws a noise from Nick's mouth. It sounds like a laugh but also a gasp and Greg feels his mouth move into a smile against Nick's at the hum of it. Nick knees him in the side, keeps the pressure solid until Greg does it again. They move on the bed. Nick's knees bracket Greg's hips. Between them, Greg's fingers fumble with the button of Nick's jeans. Against his lips he feels, "No, no, let me."

After he pulls Greg's hand away, Nick keeps it tangled up with his, next to them both on the mattress. He gets Greg's jeans open with a lot more ease.

For Greg's 18th birthday, Nick gets him drunk and gives him a handjob.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Greg expects it to be a onetime thing. But it isn't.

He then waits for it to come to end. Because Nick is fickle. Nick goes through boys and partners and breaks hearts more than he breaks noses − and he's broken a few of those in the years Greg has known him − and Greg waits for him to become yet another one of Nick's former. Whatevers. Because Nick inconsistent as fuck with his feelings and love. To everyone.

Except his sister.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

The rest of the Corleones find out about the two of them together.

When Greg's acceptance letter from Columbia arrives, Nick gives him a blowjob and lets him come in his mouth as a congratulatory present. Greg lies there afterwards, trying to remember how to breathe, and just lets Nick do what he wants.

He bites his throat. Bites and bites and bites and bites and Greg feels his dick respond to it but doesn't think he can go for another round so soon.

Gemma spots the mark in the morning. She's almost 16 and she's wicked smart and brutally blunt about everything and as the two boys sit down opposite one another at the table, she announces, "You've a hickey." Her finger points directly at Greg. 

He can't find words.

Nick smirks at his sister. Greg hopes the ground will open up and eat him. From the head of the table, Benito chuckles. "Good for you two," he says.

Greg remains quiet, in case he says something to break the spell.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

(Gemma would never admit it, but when she was about 12 she had a crush on Greg. After years of the Clemenzas coming over to the house, all sharp cheekbones and tough boy exterior, Gemma had a crush on gangly, awkward Greg who never teased her for reading romance novels. She got over it before she turned 13 but still. It happened.)

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Benito waits for a fight about it. Benito waits and Gemma turns 16.

The entire family − cousins and second cousins and divorced wives and bastard children, the lot − gather together and celebrate her birthday. There was a similar party for Nick's 16th, but for some reason this feels bigger.

He and Nick pretty much bail around 10. Once the plates are all cleared away and Sabine goes off to talk to her sisters, Benito notices the boys seats are empty. He sighs and looks around for Gemma. He finds her with one of the Clemenza boys and two cousins; with a careful 'excuse us', he extracts his daughter from the group.

Her earrings are gold. They're all she asked for from her parents and they glint with the light as she tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear.

Benito says, "You're my favourite daughter, you know that?"

"I'm your only daughter." But there's a smile on her face. He kisses her hair.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Nick gets suspended again two weeks before he's meant to graduate. Benito and Sabine are called into the school to talk to the other boy's parents and the principal and Gemma is left in charge at home.

It's the worst punishment he could ever be given.

Greg walks into the room and the Corleones are sprawled out lengthways across the smaller couch, hips knocking off one another as they squirm for more space. Nick is going to be 19 in the summer and here he is, arguing with his younger sister over a couch. Chuckling to himself, Greg leaves them to it.

He takes the bigger couch for himself.

Squirming for space descends into fighting rather easily. Greg watches it happen and sighs. Nick fights viciously, kicks his sister in the thigh and makes her shout out in pain; but Gemma gives back as good as she gets. She fights dirty, uses her nails so when Nick does topple onto the ground, he's bleeding and frowning and calling Gemma a bitch.

Gemma licks his blood out from under her nail and ignores him.

Greg shifts his legs on his couch, but Nick doesn't take the offered space.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Sabine looks at her son and daughter, asleep on the couch, Nick's head on Gemma's shoulder and sighs. She steps away and places a blanket over Greg on the other one.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Greg goes to Columbia in the fall; Nick doesn't go with him. Nick starts working with Benito and Greg comes home on weekends and meets a variety of different boys Nick is dating. He always knew it would have to end between but. It doesn't.

Not officially.

They're both adults now. Technically. Old enough to see R rated movies and take out the car and their curfews are essentially non-existent. But they still share a room.

For the first three nights for Christmas break, nothing happens. But then the fourth night comes and Gemma knocks on the door, drunk from some party she was at and Nick lets her take his bed because that's easier than carrying her down the hallway − passed their parents' bedroom − and putting her to bed under her own duvet. Nick forfeits his bed to his sister and climbs into Greg's.

He never gets back out of it.

Gemma isn't there the next night but Nick still gets into Greg's bed and when Greg climbs in, face washed and mint taste clinging to the back of his teeth, especially around the filling he had to get after he fell off the garden swing four summers ago and knocked out his own molar, and Nick kisses him.

Greg kisses back.

He kisses Nick first the next night. But then a knock at the door comes and it's Gemma, looking pale and shivering and Nick goes into big brother mode in the blink of an eye.

This time, he puts Gemma in Greg's bed and climbs in after her. Greg's shoulders crash into the wall behind him but he smiles when Gemma looks up at him under her eyelashes and apologises. "It's ok," he soothes. He isn't mad − could never really be mad at her, not when she seems so small between the two of them. He just has an issue with where to put his hand.

Eventually, after he lets the cold air in twice and Nick scolds him both times, Nick takes Greg's hand and places it under his on Gemma's hip.

"Go to sleep," he orders.

Gemma chuckles softly between them, breath warming Greg's collarbone where his t-shirt has fallen away.

For the rest of Greg's Christmas break, Gemma sleeps in the room with Nick and Greg. At first, Greg thinks they should push the two beds together, give them all a little more room but on the last night, with Nick's hand in his and Gemma breathing slowly into his chest, he thinks his bed back in his dorm will be too large for him to sleep in alone.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Benito has Nick. He has Greg. So he gives Gemma a choice. "Where would you like to go to college?" he asks. He hopes, quietly, that she will pick somewhere on the east coast, that she will stay close enough to home that if he needs her, she can come straight back. But Gemma has always been his daughter, so when she says her top three colleges, Benito should have known they'd all be on the west coast.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

For three years, it goes like this:

Nick works with Benito. Greg studies law in Columbia and comes home on weekends. The Clemenzas come over every Friday, along with the Barzinis and the Pentangelis and the three families sit around the Corleones large dining table and talk about anything but business, since Sabine's rules that business should not be discussed over food.

Gemma comes home whenever she feels like it. She's majoring in Art and Art History in Stanford − something Benito thinks it a waste of time for someone with an IQ of 180 but it's his daughter's choice and Gemma always does what she wants − and just about remembers to call home once a week. She goes to Italy − "To look at Renaissance art," Nick tells Greg while Benito smokes a cigar in the corner chair, looking dark and talking in hushed tones with the others − one Christmas and comes home with gifts for everyone but no apology for missing the family dinner on December 25. The only thing Benito asks her is, "Did you get mass?"

She says she did. Nick has his doubts.

The next summer, she comes home with a boyfriend. His name's Henry and he's from an Irish family and he's a nice boy. That's what Sabine says to her husband when Gemma goes back to California. "He's a nice boy. She's happy."

Benito misses his daughter.

Greg graduates with a first and the Corleones throw him a huge party. He invites a couple of people from his classes and Sabine nudges him in the hip with her own, nods in the direction of a few girls and asks, "So, do you like any of them?" He just flushes and fumbles out a 'no, no, it's not like that'.

Around 1am Nick breaks up with his current boyfriend, a twinky little thing named Louis who Benito doesn't approve of but his wife tells him to butt out, it's Nick's life. They break up in the middle of the room, loud and spectacular and overdramatic.

Greg tries to go after him. But Nick shrugs him off.

Later, when everyone else has gone and Greg stumbles upstairs towards his bedroom − there's talk of him getting his own apartment soon − he stops at the door at the sound of a voice. "I just miss you," he hears Nick says. His voice is thick, like he's been crying.

There's only one person it can be.

Greg feels like a fool but he stays in the hall. He stands there, head resting against the door and trying his best not to listen in on Nick's phone call with Gemma, and waits for it to end before he walks in.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

(There's a portrait of the five of them, Benito and Sabine and the three kids, hanging in the downstairs hallway. Sabine arranged for it to be painted around Gemma's ninth birthday. Greg ended up in the middle of Nick and his sister because they kept kicking one another. 

Benito put him there.

That was the day he realised Benito viewed him as one of the family. But, just because their father did, that didn't mean Gemma and Nick looked at him as their brother. No. Greg was their- just theirs. But they were never going to be his.)

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma graduates, breaks up with Henry, moves back to New York and starts fucking a Clemenza within the space of a two weeks. It's pretty impressive if you ask Nick, but Gemma has always been someone who gets what she wants.

He helps her shift boxes to her new place, all her romance novels and the prom dress she'll never wear again, cos Nick will always be her big brother.

Greg can't help, since he's busy with Benito and something Nick hasn't been asked to help with. Sabine is having lunch with her sister; they were invited to join her, but their aunt has never been that nice to Nick and Gemma gracefully bowed out for the pair of them. Nick never thanks her for it, but he ends up carrying six heavy boxes and an armchair up four flights of stairs after they discover the elevator's broken, so he feels he repays her in kind.

She makes them iced tea while Nick drops the last box onto Gemma's new coffee table.

"So. How have things been?"

What she means to say is Benito's mad at her. He never expected his daughter to be the first child to officially move out and even with all the gentle prodding from his wife, he isn't ready to accept it. As some sort of weird punishment, he's been refusing to talk about _anything_ in front of his daughter.

Nick gives her a shrug. He accepts the glass offered to him with a quiet 'thank you'. "Same old, same old," he eventually says, then immediately regrets it because. Gemma hasn't been around for everything recently.

She takes it on the chin.

"Anything new with you, then?" she asks.

He takes a moment to consider his answer. In that time, the pair of them drift over to the couch. It's still covered in plastic but they're both too tired to remove it right now. It makes a noise off Nick's jeans. "Not really. The air conditioning in Dad's office broke the other day."

Gemma gives him a look. (Nick had missed her face a lot when she was away.)

"You know that's not what I meant."

Nick smiles before he takes a sip of his drink. "Oh," he says, after he's swallowed. "What did you mean?" Gemma's elbow meets his ribs and once again, Nick's jeans make a noise off the plastic on the couch.

"Nicolo," she scolds. Nick wrinkles his nose in a frown at her; only their mom can call him that and get away with it. "How're you?"

"I'm alright."

"And Greg?"

He answers, "He missed you," at the same time Gemma asks, "And, together?"

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

A second cousin, a bleach blonde with perfect teeth and no freckles, marries into the Genoveses. Benito gets invited to the wedding because it's Benito and he's head of their house, even if he isn't the girl's father. Gemma gets to go as a weird peace offering from father to daughter; she brings Nick and Greg because she doesn't know that side of the family too well and everything is always more fun with Nick beside her.

Greg is an afterthought, but an important one.

Nick's tie matches Gemma's dress purely because Sabine wouldn't have it any other way. She tries her best to get Greg to wear the same colour, but it doesn't work with his suit. He and Nick wear grey − it photographs nicely side by side, but in reality they ever so slightly clash.

Gemma catches the bouquet. She gives it to Greg.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

"Look after my brother," she instructs, finger jabbing into Greg's chest, her nail really digging in and Greg can't say no to that.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Carmine Clemenza gets shot. Benito hears the news two hours after it happens. He growls and frowns and sends Nick for coffee. (He calls Greg while he's out of the office.) He stares at the phone as he thinks about calling Gemma. She's in Paris with some photographer, over a thousand miles away when he needs her. Benito's consigliere has just been shot.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

She arrives home an hour before the funeral after flying through the night. Luckily, everyone looks pale in black and no one comments on Gemma's appearance. Sabine gets her a cup of coffee the minute they arrive at the reception in the hotel and Gemma tops up her lipstick, a bright flashy scarlet colour Greg can't help staring at; by the time Benito has gathered everyone up and led them into his office, she looks almost human again, despite her lack of sleep.

They discuss protocol. Some money and flowers for the widow and family. And security for the organisation. No one mentions anything about appointing a new consigliere.

Once they're finished, once they've been gone long enough for the wives and partners to start tutting and tapping their feet waiting for them, Benito dismisses everyone from the room but his daughter. At 23, she looks like her mother but carries herself like her father. 

She stands while he sits.

And she laughs when he offers her the position.

"Are you trying to start a war, Papa?" Gemma asks while folding her arms across her chest. Benito looks down to find his own arms crossed the same way. "Women are never consiglieres."

"Yes, they are," he argues.

His daughter looks unmoved. "No, they aren't," she counters and Benito sighs. "They might hold the position, informally, but they are never asked by Dons." She lets it slide when he doesn't try to pick it back up. "What about Nicky?"

Benito sighs, "He's already my underboss-"

"And if you wanted him to be consigliere, you wouldn't have called me back from Paris," she finishes for him.

Gemma has always been too smart for her own good, her father's daughter through and through. He sighs and states, "I trust you − I need someone I can trust."

"So, trust me when I tell you it's a bad idea."

Benito agrees with a nod. "Then, if you're so wise, who should I make consigliere since you won't take it?"

She takes a seat without being offered it. She thinks for a minute, tapping her fingers off the crook of her elbow. "What about Greg?"

"Now who is trying to start a war."

"Oh, stop," Gemma returns. "He's like family. You put him through law school, you let him live in Nick's room, under your own roof, for the past 18 years and you're going to tell me you don't trust him."

Benito huffs, "Of course I do, gioiella; you know Greg means the world to me. But he's not Italian."

"He's a man." She pauses. "And he's smart. At least, try it for a little while. If it doesn't work, we can always find you a new one. But, please, not one of those blockheaded Barzinis."

He laughs.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Nick dates Harry for such a long time, the longest Greg has ever known Nick to be with anyone, he thinks this might be the one. Harry could actually be the one person the planet to make Nick settle down.

He finds it surprisingly easy not to feel disappointed when the relationship comes to an end.

"Topolino," Sabine says into his hair as she's serving dinner that night. "Don't be sad at my dinner table." It gets a smile out of Nick.

That night, they go back to Greg's place and fuck on the couch, pants down and fingers opening buttons on shirts before they're even fully through the door. (Afterwards, Greg gets back up and pads over towards the door to put on the bolt lock. His apartment might be in one of the nicer neighbourhoods in New York, but it's still fucking New York.)

They call Gemma in the morning. Nick tries his best not to cry but ends up laughing out a few tears when Gemma states, "Good. He was nice but he had a lot of hair. I was always scared a bird or something was gonna come flying out of it at me."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

One of the Barzinis gets stabbed.

Benito doesn't care what she or anyone else has to say on the matter, Gemma is now a caporegime.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma moves to Sicily for a year. There are rumours flying around the place that she has got secretly married out there, on the island. But Greg figures she hasn't, since Gemma doesn't do anything without running it passed Nick first. Who, in turn, runs it passed Greg. If Gemma had even considered getting married, even the slightest, most fleeting thought on the matter, Greg would know.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

That same year, Nick kills a guy.

He breaks one of the Bonannos' jaws and punches his face until it's a bloody pulp. He feels teeth break beneath his knuckles. Two thoughts flash through his head as he stands back up, leaves the guy a mess on the floor − first, he thinks of Gemma and her small fist crashing into his face when they were kids and secondly, he remembers the kid who called her a bitch and how satisfying the crunch of Nick's knuckles to his face were that day.

This isn't anything like either of those times.

By the time he gets to Greg's place, he's shaking. Greg ushers him in and keeps his arm around his shoulders. Nick is pale and trembling and tiny underneath his arm, with another guy's blood splattered across his shirt but Greg will ask about that when he's got a bit of colour back.

He makes tea because it's too late for coffee. Nick drinks the whole thing before he can speak.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

They shoot Benito.

Nick doesn't know which family, but they shoot Benito. They put six bullets in him, but he doesn't die. Corleones are made of stronger stuff than most.

Nick spends the first two nights in the chair by his father's bed, counting off beeps from the heart monitor and catching twenty minute naps when he forgets he needs to stay awake and drops off. On the third morning, Greg takes him back home, to Sabine, and calls Gemma for him. He tells her, "Your dad's been shot."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she says, in the smallest voice Greg has ever heard her use.

He only gets three hours sleep, but Greg wakes up in his old bed to find Nick showered and wearing fresh clothes, ready to go back to the hospital and Greg can't exactly say no. They go and sit with Benito until dinner time, when he tells the two of them, "Go home, back to Mama. She'll have made dinner and I don't want her eating alone." They arrive home to find Gemma standing in the kitchen making coffee. Her Stanford hoodie is grey and she looks exhausted.

She immediately looks at Nick. "What did you do?" And then at Greg, "Hi."

"Welcome home," he replies, because it feels apt.

He drives Gemma to the hospital after dinner and leaves her sit with her dad, quietly showing himself out of the room as Benito reaches across the covers to hold his daughter's hand. It isn't Greg's place.

She comes to find him in the hall at one point and tells him, "You can go home. I don't need a babysitter."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Greg drives Sabine to the hospital the next morning. Gently, Sabine wakes Gemma. After sleeping the whole night in a chair, she cracks her neck, turning her head one way then the other on her shoulders and making the bones move back into place with a loud snap. Greg grimaces at the noise.

Sabine tells Greg, "Take her home."

Greg does as he's told.

At home, back in the Corleones' house with the same wallpaper they've always had and the stain on the carpet at the bottom of the stairs where Gemma fell and broke her nose, bled everywhere and not one of the four carpet cleaning specialists Benito got in could get the blood out of the fibres completely, back where the three of them grew up, Gemma walks into the living room and all but falls on top of her brother on the couch.

He moves over to give her space but she stays right on top of him.

Greg takes the other couch, sprawls out lengthways across it. No one says anything. Nick kisses the top of his sister's head and moves his hand to touch the skin of her spine, knuckles pushing her t-shirt out of the way.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Benito calls the boys in one by one.

To Greg he says, "You're like family. And I know you'll do it without me asking you to, but I still want to hear you promise me that you'll look after my kids." The only thing Greg can do is nod. Benito looks so small in the bed, all tubes and wires and the constant, steady beep of the heart monitor − the polar opposite of the tall, huge presence of him before.

Greg nods and Benito says, "Good boy."

To Nick he says, "She's going to fight you on this, but I need you to get Gemma to stay. You'll need both of you here when the vultures start to descend."

It's Benito's way of telling his son he's ready to die.

Nick nods. He says, "She's not used to being told what to do. But I'll get her to stay. Don't worry, Papa, I'll do it."

It's Nick's way of accepting he was never going to become Don after his father's death. Benito reaches for his son's hand, his grip tight and cold and he says, "Nicky." Only Gemma calls Nick that, but Nick doesn't cause a fuss.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma doesn't get to see her father again before he dies.

Benito dies at 11:03 on Wednesday morning with Sabine and Vittorio Barzini by his side, while his two children and Greg are getting Starbucks two blocks from the hospital, a large bunch of flowers in Gemma's arms, ready to go in and see him. They're chrysanthemums, pink and red and yellow and white; they get put on top of the coffin at the funeral.

Nick manages to hold it together for most of the service, but when he steps up to thank people for coming, he takes one look down at the congregation and can't find his father in the crowd. His voice breaks. A hand lands solidly on the small of his back and he stops speaking. "It's ok," Gemma whispers.

Carefully she slides into his place at the podium. Greg takes Nick away with an arm around his shoulders. He doesn't let go until they're all in the funeral car, on the way to the reception.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

"You're my favourite brother," she says. Nick sighs but smiles, his mouth moving into a smirk. With a hand wrapped around her throat, he pulls her in and kisses Gemma's cheek, close to her mouth.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

They push the beds together tonight.

After getting back from the reception and eventually managing to clear all the well wishers and guests and old family friends out of the house, Nick realised it was too late for them to all head home. And none of them really wanted to be alone tonight anyway.

Gemma tells Sabine, "Ma, take my bed. We'll clean Papa's room in the morning."

Sabine smiles at her daughter, eyes wet with tears and tiredness, and leans in for a hug. "Thank you, gioiella."

To Greg she says, "Don't let them bully you, piccolino. Take up as much of the bed as you like." Greg smiles at her, a little lopsided but just as meaningful, as Gemma leads her mom off to her room.

She enters the room and immediately gets his in the face with a pillow. Nick laughs. "You get the spot over the gap," he informs her. Silently, Gemma raises an eyebrow.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Nick says, "They're declaring war."

Gemma eases back into Benito's old chair. She has no plans to move, but Nick still looks at his sister like he's waiting for her to get up and leave. His eyes are their mother's. In contrast, Gemma is every part her father's daughter.

Greg waits.

"It's a wedding invitation, Nicky. Not a bomb."

In his head, Greg thinks _it could be laced with anthrax_ but decides against voicing it.

"To a cop wedding."

Gemma says, "I went to school with the girl."

Nick sniffs. "Yeah? Well, you never talk on Facebook."

"I'm going."

"Fine. But bring Greg. He is consigliere after all." Greg stutters out a breath but if the look on Gemma's face is anything to go by, she had never considered anything else.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Gemma wears black to the wedding. Black lace and very little breathing room. Before they leave, Sabine scolds her. "Black to a wedding, Gemma Christine. What are you doing? You can't upstage the bride."

While she pins a rose into Greg's lapel, Gemma replies, "I know, Mama. That's why I'm wearing black − I was considering going in white before." Sabine tuts and shoos the pair of them out the door. Nick waves at them until the car is out of the driveway.

At the reception, Gemma hugs the bride and kisses her cheek. "Congratulation, Mia."

The photographer snaps a photo of them together, since he doesn't know better. At the table, the bride's father and brothers glare at Gemma. She turns her head to them, and smiles. All wolfish teeth and sweetly snarling, even Greg takes a step back.

Mia leans her head into the curve of Gemma's neck and whispers, "Thank you for coming." It sounds genuine.

When they get home, Gemma kicks her shoes off in the hallway and Greg shrugs off his jacket. She drops down five inches in height. Greg smiles, just for her, as she reaches out and steadies herself on his arm. He looks down at the her but she's looking away, moving her shoe along the ground so it sits somewhat neatly next to its pair. Greg watches her knee.

She lets go and pads off to the kitchen.

Greg stays behind, fiddling with his cufflinks. Once they're all, he rolls his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. Gemma is standing by the kettle when he enters the room. There are two cups beside her, waiting for the water to heat. Greg appreciates the gesture. "You did good today," he tells her.

Gemma looks at him like she already knew that.

"He would be proud of you."

He says it as she turns around to get the milk out of the fridge, says it as another strand of hair falls from her up-do and brushes down the skin of her back. The muscles in her shoulder twitch. Greg steps in behind her. "I mean it, he would."

She nods.

"If you need anything, you know I'm here for you." Greg isn't sure where it comes from, but he feels as if he hasn't said it to her before. He's said it to Nick, promised Benito the same, but has never actually come out and said it to Gemma. She nods again. He places his hand on the curve of her back, zipper pressing into his palm.

The kettle comes to a boil.

In the light of the open fridge, her cheekbones are emphasised. "Anything at all," Greg adds.

When Gemma pulls him in and kisses him, it feels like he's finally come home.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

The Clemenzas and Barzinis agree with Nick. If the Garibaldis are working with cops now, the Corleones could be in trouble. But Gemma stands firm, her long finger − with blood red nail − points at them all. "We don't kill cops," she states. "That's not how this organisation works."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

Greg tells Nick about kissing Gemma after he kisses Nick. He pulls away and says, "I kissed your sister."

Nick nods.

"When?"

Since he is being honest, Greg goes with, "When she was 12. And after the wedding."

Nick smiles. They wear their smiles the same way, the Corleone children. Greg reaches up his hand to cup Nick's face. "That's ok," Nick says, voice small. "It's ok," and Greg kisses him again.

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

She finds Sabine tugging an armchair into the hall when she comes downstairs. Gemma frowns as she asks, "What is going on down here?"

Sabine looks up at her daughter, sheepish and apologetic. "Sorry," she sounds out. It's punctuated with the smack of furniture off the wooden floor. Gemma grimaces at the sound. "I forgot you were up there. I didn't think I was disturbing anyone."

"Yeah, well, it sounds like you're waltzing furniture down here, Ma."

She steps into the living room. Or, at least, what's left of it. "Where's the couch? Where did all these books come from? What are you doing?"

Sabine states, "I got thinking, and you know me. When I think, I have to clean. So I decided to move things around to clean under stuff, you know? I wanna vacuum."

Gemma peers around the doorframe and back into the hall. "Moving the couch into the hall to vacuum seems kinda counterproductive, don't you think?" Sabine shrugs. "What were you thinking about anyway? Usually you just dust something. One cabinet. Now you've got the couch in the hall; were you planning on redecorating?" Sabine neither confirms nor denies her daughter's assumption. "Is the piano in the kitchen?" Gemma asks.

Her mom just rolls her eyes.

"I found the old wedding album. Of me and your father."

Gemma groans out a quiet 'fuck'. She should have stayed upstairs and left her to it. Even if it did sound like someone was moving a herd of buffalo around the living room. She recovers quickly, careful not to roll her eyes at her mother, and says, "Yeah?"

"You know, I was your age when I married your father."

"I did know that."

Sabine says at her daughter's sass. "I want grandbabies. Little Corleones running around the place. Your father died before he could see any and Lord knows, Nick isn't going to supply any soon."

Gemma laughs.

"I hear that Clemenza boy is still sweet on you."

Her laugh turns into another groan. "I'll give you grandbabies, Ma. But I'm not marrying a Clemenza."

Sabine retorts, "At least think about it."

"No. I am not marrying him. We dated when I was, what? 16."

"I just don't want you to be lonely." There it is. There's the truth, the thought that made her mother dismantle the living room. "You're the same as your father, always up in that office. Alone. Discussing business with people over the phone, but never with any humans. He spent so much of his life cooped up in that office and the only reason he didn't go mad is because he had us; you and me, Nick. And Greg. I don't want you alone all the time."

Gemma smiles softly. "I'm not alone, Ma. I've got you, don't I?"

"I'm not gonna be around forever."

"And Nicky. And Greg."

Sabine sighs. "You and those boys." She reaches out for her daughter. "Just promise me you're happy."

"I promise," she says. And it isn't a lie. "Now, start putting the books back on the shelf, you can vacuum tomorrow. And don't touch the couch, the boys will do it when they get home."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

"Ma wants grandbabies," Gemma tells them.

Greg blushes.

Nick replies, "I'll get right on that for her."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

In Nick's defence, he didn't know he was a cop. The fucker only tells him as he's dying. Laughs as blood bubbles in the corner of his mouth and tells Nick, "You're fucked now." Nick shoots him the face to shut him up − he was dying anyway, so what's another bullet?

He holds it together the whole car journey, but by the time he gets to Gemma's place, he's shaking.

He throws up the second she opens the door, the milky vomit splashing all over her welcome mat and shoes. She gently helps him up into standing and says, "It's ok, I've got you." Even though he told her everything on the phone − and she had sounded mad on the phone − when Nick tells it all to her again, Gemma just gently rubs his back and lies with him on the couch.

"Don't worry," she says.

Her voice doesn't break and Nick thinks he may be about to throw up on her again.

"I'll look after it."

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

The next morning, she drives Greg and Nick to the airport in Greg's car. (One of the Clemenza's takes Nick's car and burns it. The gun gets thrown into the river.) As they drive, the radio reports the death of a cop in the area, asks if anyone with any information would like to step forward; loyalty and a few grand in the right pockets has everyone shut up before the announcement was even written but Greg appreciates their efforts. He changes the radio station on.

They pull up into a 'drop off only' area and Gemma turns off the engine. She has always done whatever she wants.

Nick smiles. He reaches for her hand.

"I'll call you home when things have settled."

"Where am I going?"

Gemma hands him an envelope. There are two tickets inside of it. Before Nick can comment, tell her she's being dumb, she says, "Just a little break in Italy, for you and Greg." Greg seems as surprised as Nick by this.

"Sis, you can't-"

She kisses Nick's knuckles before telling him, "Yeah, I can. I'll be fine."

"But he's your consigliere."

"Yours too," she counters. Greg watches them both, watches them looking at one another. He doesn't know what to say. "Now, go. Before you miss your flight."

Before he gets out of the car, Nick stops and kisses his sister. It's brief, but some of her lipstick comes away on his lips when he pulls away. Greg moves in and kisses her next. Against her lips, he promises, "I'll look after him for you." Gemma nods after they've broken apart.

"I know you will," she smiles.

 

 

**_F I N_ **


End file.
